Typically, when a heating appliance, such as a wood stove, is to be installed in an existing room adjacent a flammable wall behind which is located the chimney, the stove must be spaced a required distance from the flammable wall and the stove pipe or thimble must pass through an opening in the wall which is both large enough to provide ample clearance and which is lined with insulation to shield the wall from the heat. Various systems have been proposed both for improving the protective assembly passing through the wall and for shielding the wall from the stove itself to reduce the required clearance.
Examples of such systems are to be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 677,447; 794,301; 1,584,912; 3,046,976; 3,848,897; 4,463,748 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,543,942, dealing with stove pipe or thimble installations, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,399,805 which discloses a protective panel for insulating a wall from a nearby stove.
The present invention provides a wholly new approach to the solution of the problem sought to be solved by the prior art.